Indian practical rural distribution systems are very long and spread over a wide range of area. The nodes far away from the distribution substation are suffering from low voltage. In India, total distribution system losses are around 20% to 25%. From the past few years, penetration of distributed generation (DG) in to the distribution network/system is increasing expeditiously. DG allocation with appropriate location and size can provide numerous benefits to the distribution companies as well as to the society. In this regard, a new technique called combined sensitivity index (CSI), to find the optimal DG unit location, based on voltage sensitivity and network load magnitude is proposed. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed technique, it is tested on Indian practical 52-bus rural distribution system. The results obtained with the proposed CSI technique is compared with the results obtained with the combined power loss sensitivity (CPLS) technique. Here, the optimal DG unit size is calculated using Bird Swarm Algorithm (BSA). The results show that the proposed CSI technique performs better in minimizing power losses and voltage profile augmentation when compared to existing CPLS technique.

This article addresses an optimal allocation of multi Distributed Generation (DG) units in an Indian practical radial distribution network (RDN) for minimization of network loss and voltage deviation. For this work, combined sensitivity index (CSI) is utilized to identify the appropriate positions/locations of DG units. However, the appropriate size of DG is determined through a nature-inspired; population-based Bird Swarm Algorithm (BSA). Secondly, the influence of DG penetration level on network loss and voltage profile is investigated and presented. In this regard, two types of DG technologies (solar and biomass) are considered for loss reduction and voltage deviation reduction. The performance of CSI and BSA methodology is successfully evaluated on an Indian practical 52-bus RDN.